Developers of the open-source JBoss application server
held their own conference in San Francisco this week, only a few
hundred yards from JavaOne's venue.
Throughout the day, about 200 Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)
developers, most wearing JavaOne ID tags, filed in and out of
the conference, catching discussions on JBoss and gossiping about
JBoss's acrimonious relationship with Sun, and about the JBoss
Group's latest rival, the Core Developers Network, which was formed
by ex-JBoss Group workers.
The JBoss Group, which controls the development of the
open-source JBoss J2EE server, has been embroiled in a year-long
dispute over the certification of JBoss.
Sun would like JBoss to be certified as J2EE compliant, but the
JBoss Group said Sun's certification process is expensive and,
ultimately, unimportant to their customers.
"With a good faith commitment to compatibility, they could
become compliant so very easily," said Rick Saletta, a Sun
Marketing Manager for OEM Licensing.
However, he questioned the "good faith" of the JBoss Group,
suggesting that the company's founder and president, Marc Fleury,
had been using JBoss's status as an open-source project to avoid
the J2EE certification Sun has demanded of other companies.
"We don't want to be seen as anti-open source, and he's been
hiding behind that wall," said Saletta. "Marc Fleury and the JBoss
group are standards renegades," he said.
Fleury denied the charge. "The certification brand is a product
and there's a price to it," he said. "The price has been expensive
in the past, and it was more than we were willing to pay... I think
the certification for open source should be free."
Robert McMillan writes for IDG News
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